The False Promises of Doctrine & Deconstruction
What's left after all this talk about wayward faith?
I wish I had my high school Bible to show you just how religious I was.
Inside the front cover was a list of conversion verses I had typed using some early 2000s popular font. I did this because every night when I tried to fall asleep under the denim comforter in a renovated just-for-me attic room, my teenage brain worried endlessly about the souls that were dying without knowing Jesus.
Overconfidence has forever been my strength and also my vice. Still, something in my upbringing conditioned me to think that I could proof-text the Gospel from Creation to Christ in 15 minutes with someone before going full-blown Ethiopian Eunich with them into the closest body of water.
This sounds like hyperbole, but in my heart and in my mind, it was so very real.
Not only did other peoples’ eternities rely on their hearing the verses I had prepared, but my very salvation also hung on my ability to present the Word to them in a way that compelled their obedience and baptism.
I was a juvenile zealot with over-plucked eyebrows in 4” heals. And I had my heart set on an exotic mission field abroad.
At some point, the game changed for me.
Maybe it was after I used my scripture list to try and convert my best friend (a Baptist) to my denomination. The frame of a just and jealous God had me absolutely convinced that her good deeds coupled with her love for Jesus could never overcompensate for the fact that she worshipped with a piano on Sunday mornings.
I gave my best theological arguments.
I pleaded with her to reconsider the way she read Scripture.
I even cried out of sheer concern for her salvation.
In the end, my scripture list was no use. My dearest friend was LOST, and it was my fault because I wasn’t good enough to lead her to my side of biblical interpretation.
These doctrinal defenses and tears of concern didn’t work on the gay boy in my high school journalism class, either.
Or the single mom in Haiti on a college mission trip.
Or the Nazarene friend I respected so much in my early 20s.
NOTHING WORKED. And what’s worse, I felt like it was my responsibility to make it work, whatever *it* was.
I was absolutely exhausted by the pursuit of perfect theology, as well as the pursuit of others accepting that theology.
The unraveling of my faith construction was an emotional and rage-y decade that led me nowhere at first except to a pile of doctrinal strings that couldn’t pass a purity sniff text. The warp and weft they had once offered me as a warm, safe covering was a spiritual blanket I no longer desired even near my bed at night.
I wanted nothing to do with the faith of my youth. The notes I had scribbled into my Bible during church sermons felt cheap, as if they were merely stolen from regurgitated, untested defenses of Scripture.
Hadn’t I done everything right?
Hadn’t I attended every gathering of my church?
Hadn’t I followed every directive as to how to live a godly life?
By 2014, I found myself on the opposite side of the globe trying to prove to God that I was worthy and qualified to be a useful messenger.
I remember sitting on a cold, tile floor in a pink house in Southeast Asia learning a tonal language that might have me naming a neighbor’s genetalia instead of properly introducing myself to that neighbor.
It was there that I finally broke. I was completely burned out on religious perfection.
How in the world could I connect to someone’s intimate spirituality when I coudn’t even order eggs cooked the way I like? What in the world was I thinking invading a sovereign land with an ancient culture to teach a Gospel that I couldn’t even convince someone with my own heritage to see as valuable?
That was the night of surrender.
I look at these photos and I see a body that I know. I see places that are familiar and a baby version of my now 10-year-old. But the woman in these photos feels so wildly distant to me.
How can a few years and a few life-changing experiences alter the internal fabric of a person past the point of recognition?
The woman in these photos was so very afraid. Though she projected an air of self-satisfaction, she was figuring out how to strategically choke down a construct of God that had been manicured specifically to a 1960s woman in the U.S. South.
But I wasn’t a 1960s woman in Tennessee. I was a modern woman in an Buddhist culture that was functioning under a communist government with minimal technology.
Same woman. New Context.
And a WHOLE new God.
I co-founded Kindred Exchange in 2020 because I felt deeply indebted to the Followers of Christ who had rescued my faith in other parts of the world. As I was unraveling, they were showing me new and thrilling facets of the person of God I had never been able to see reflected through my singular worldview.
KNOW THIS: As we encounter more of the world around us, we will quickly realize that perfecting religious doctrine is a false promise that offers nothing more than a short-lived peace of mind.
We may feel more safe with a list of verses on which we choose to hang our eternity hat.
We may feel more confident poking holes in the beliefs that others hold in their individual walks with God.
But valuing doctrine over people eliminates the mystery of a missional God, and it closes our minds to the ways a missional God may choose to work outside of our beloved doctrine.
While we’re deconstructing, let’s also acklowledge that tearing down our previously held beliefs about God is most helpful when we are tying knots of our faith back together.
Deconstruction in the absence of reconstruction is like burning down a house on an expensive piece of property with no intention to rebuild a better home.
Our souls need constructs of something beyond ourselves in order to stay grounded.
The events that led to our deconstruction need redemptive moments in order for us to heal.
Without the hope of a better faith, we will find ourselves bitter, empty, and perhaps no better off than when we started unwinding in all of this to begin with.
Deconstruction offers the same false promises as well-researched doctrine. While one offers all the answers, the other rejects every answer.
God is somewhere in the middle of all this, offering substantially more depth than any creed or set of beliefs, as well as more mystery and wonder than any attempt to discredit the supernatural.
If there are things to burn, let them burn. But don’t stop there.
Unearth the embers of your theological ashes. I am confident you will discover more richness there than you ever risked losing in the blaze.
-lp
Love this! So thankful to be connected to you because I feel like I’ve lived so many of these same experiences and thoughts and come out on the other side of in the middle of this deconstruction and now reconstruction phase.
“As we encounter more of the world around us, we will quickly realize that perfecting religious doctrine is a false promise that offers nothing more than a short-lived peace of mind.” THIS!